Thoughts from a Part-Core Gamer

Spawn of the Worldbreaker

It would be Deathwing’s kid that forced me back into PvP, wouldn’t it? It is a subtle way for him to get revenge on everyone who killed his father while appearing to be benevolent.

So yes, I finally capped over the last 15 VP I needed to finish A Test of Valor. Missing it by so little was a bit of an irritation, but hell, it was only a few days. I was under the impression that the next step would be what I’ve heard so many people complaining about, gathering the Secrets. But, no – there was something else. Two quests, in fact. One to go blow up some unlucky dude. No worries there.

But then, he wanted me to go do two battlegrounds. No – not do them, win them.

I quit playing League of Legends because of the way it made me feel. I’d be angry for 30 minutes, then maybe happy a few because we won, or maybe angry anyway because we lost. There was no balance of positivity involved; when things were going wrong, I felt bad, even if it ended in a win. The winning glow would only last a moment, though, before going into the next match. There was no balance of efficacy, either; even if I played well, I could lose due to others playing idiotically. As a result, I spent far too much time unhappy.

When I realized how negative I’d become about the whole thing, I stopped playing. I was never big into WoW pvp, either, figuring that it was mostly a dumping ground for people with diseased minds who needed to get their violence and aggression out in a legal way. I pvp’d a little, once to level a character – a rogue – so I could be the one with the diseased mind for a while, and once because it was what my otherwise PvE guild was doing with its spare time, which was stupid and pointless, as evidenced by how that guild disintegrated.

Now I’d be forced back into it, with no gear, and no knowledge whatsoever about the strategies.

I got into the mines thing first and had a tough decision to make – do I admit I need some clue as to what to do and probably face nastiness for it, or keep my mouth closed. I opened it, though, and asked, and actually didn’t get given much grief. The leader marked himself and basically said to follow him, so I did. I could pretty effectively kill horde with my lava burst, especially with my ascendance cooldown, and the leader was a healer who worked to keep me alive. We won it in a close victory – within one cartload.

Then I started queueing for the Temple with the power orbs. What a hellhole. I disliked Huttball the most in Star Wars, where I tried some PvP at each 10 levels for the quest involved, and this was just that but more poorly designed. In a “messy” group, it’s essentially just an arena where you run around and – if you’re me with no pvp gear and no real clue what’s going on – get killed a bunch.

And yet in two of the attempts I made, I was the top point contributor. I grabbed the orb and avoided bad guys to stay alive. It worked fine, except that the horde had all three of the other orbs and were destroying our team over and over. The first three attempts were all losses by more than a thousand points.

In the fourth, I finally had a team who coordinated a little and basically said just everyone go to the middle and work together. Well, duh, but saying it doesn’t make everyone else do that. This time, though, they did, and we finally and handily defeated the horde.

It bothers me a lot, actually, that Blizzard would force PvE’ers into a PvP situation. I quit a PvP game because of the way it made me feel. I avoid WoW PvP because I don’t like it; I think it’s incredibly unfair to put people of wildly different skill and gear together against other players. On top of that, I used to hate the idiots who came into normal games in LoL with characters they’d never played before or even bothered to see what the abilities were and basically ruined the game for their team.

Now Blizzard was forcing me to do the same, so not only did I get to dislike the activity I got to feel guilty about being dead weight.

Like this:

Related

I didn’t care for that part of the quest line either. Went in as a healer and did good enough to keep others alive, so it worked out. I don’t have the reflexes to pvp. It would take a lot of practice to hone my reactions and not just freak out when I get jumped. It’s why I’ll never go to a pvp server again. I hated needing PvP achievements for the Children’s Week meta too.

From what I understand a lot of PvErs complained about that, so hopefully Blizzard won’t repeat that mistake in the future.

I think they were trying to encourage people who have never PvPed into trying it – and because it’s a random Battleground, you effectively have a 50% chance of winning any given BG.

I didn’t mind but I’ve gotten Duelist in the past (missed Glad by 20 rating). I suspect many others liked it as well – shook up the usual order of things.

But I don’t know the ratio of hate to like here.

“I don’t have the reflexes to pvp. It would take a lot of practice to hone my reactions and not just freak out when I get jumped.”

For what it’s worth, if players need to improve their reactions for encounters like normal Lei Shen, one of the things I suggest is for them to PvP – precisely because it constantly forces you to react and improvise. It’s an excellent way to improve your PvE skills.

“From what I understand a lot of PvErs complained about that, so hopefully Blizzard won’t repeat that mistake in the future.”

@Beshara:
Blizzard is kinda forcing players to PvP for years. If anyone wants his Violet Proto-Drake from “What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been” achievement, he MUST do some BGs for “For the Children” meta. One week in a year is a total mess there and I suppose that all PvPers try to avoid those specific battlegrounds then xP

“For what it’s worth, if players need to improve their reactions for encounters like normal Lei Shen, one of the things I suggest is for them to PvP – precisely because it constantly forces you to react and improvise. It’s an excellent way to improve your PvE skills.”

@Balkoth:
I totally agree with you! In Cata I tried some BGs and couple arenas just for fun and beacause I was bored… I must say, that it helped me a lot with my reflexes and I discovered long-forgotten abilities and learned how to use them efficiently.

But this is not a way of learning for everyone because some PvPers are really mean and cannot understand that everyone had to have their “first time”. My advice: do not participate in PvP without some friends. Probably they can calmly explain you what to do ;)

It’s too little to hate, I think. I actually think it’s only worse for the seasoned players that have given up on pvp and stick around for the other bits. Like, maybe they could pull data from your account and exempt you if you’d done battlegrounds before! Discounting that, you could say it’s like forcing people into a service industry job temporarily just so they know how bad it is, firsthand, instead of just going by hearsay.

I think about my experiences years ago in WoW pvp off and on, because there was something I really enjoyed there — I like to think it’s not just because warriors were overpowered. Something that didn’t stick around too much in the expansions. 1250 some odd online matches in Persona 4 Arena later I’m thinking it might have been time-to-kill issues combined with 1-2m cooldown-focused combat. I’ll pull up a twitch stream once every few weeks and I just shudder at the extremely high ranking 3v3 arena matches that I see end in 25 minute stalemates.